Thursday, March 1, 2007

Long Story Short ...

What a busy day! I'm sitting on one of my two favorite pieces of furniture, the leather couch Ariel gave us for Christmas one year, and just breathing. It's so nice to sit and have no one to instruct. Compound predicates are going to drive me CRAZY! One child gets it and the other doesn't. *sigh*

So I sit here and veg and stare at the opposite wall. The Mom wall. This is not what you might think. It's a wall of my mom's art work, hung above and around the piano. A sketch of me at about 4 with a parakeet on my head; a colored pencil drawing of our first Aussie that's so life like it'll take your breath away; my mother's family crest; a cross stitch of a mockingbird. The mockingbird brings a smile because I know his name -- Gershwin.

My senior year in high school my baby brother found a tiny mockingbird under a tree at church. He brought it to me and asked if he could keep it. I don't think my mom liked the idea, so I climbed the tree and put it back in its nest. He brought that silly baby bird back to me 3 times before we decided to keep it. Long story short, I raised Gershwin on spiders, roaches, hot dogs, spaghetti and string beans. I even trained him to live outside and prepared him to come to the back yard for food. He was sweet and messy (I wore flannel over shirts to protect my clothes - there were no flannel over shirts for the carpet).

The night before I was going to set him free we had company. Our friend asked to see Gersh, so I went to the bathroom, where he was closed in, to get him and couldn't find him. Turns out he'd slipped into the toilet and drowned. Poor thing. I mean me. And my friends at school didn't believe me (I'd brought him to school a couple of times). Seems that my idea of fun did me in on that one. I'd show up glum and a friend would ask what was wrong, so I'd say my goldfish had drowned. So no one believed me.

Gersh was a sweetie, and my first wild animal. The second was the black rat snake I caught in the woods in Virginia. Short story shorter -- the snake kept biting me so I let it go.

4 comments:

You have a Mom wall, so cool! I have some of her pieces as well, but they are in storage right now. :( I need to sweet talk her into a few more soon. My favorite is an old one she did of the Lion and Lamb, but I'm also very fond of a more recent one she did of a certain guardian angel of mine. ;)

Anyway, you misspelled the link for those that want to check it out. www.kareenramsey.com

Thanks for catching that. I just fixed it. Was your guardian angel Wilbur? I have other mom art in the house, but it's scattered around. You'll have a place for yours before you know it. Anything on the job front?

Ew, job hunting. I'm studying for the GREs and detesting the math section. Who needs math? Then I have to hunt for a school. Probably online. How am I supposed to remember what an integer is? And how am I going to use that in writing?

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The Good Flea defies definition or description. So there.
Oh alright. I'm mom to 3 kids - Maybelline is 22, Oatmeal Head is 21 and Goof Ball is 17. Wife to one husband - I don't think I could break in another if I wanted to.
Current mom to 4 dogs, multiple chickens and chicks, one duck and too many fish to count. I love a good road trip, so invite me over.